Re: [PATCH] 2.5.59 morse code panics

[John Bradford <john@grabjohn.com>]

>  > A lot of newer laptops do not have serial ports.
> 
> so use something sensible like a crashdump to floppy.

A lot of newer laptops do not have floppy drives :-)

Seriously, though, I agree that morse isn't the most ideal way to get
data out of a crashed system.

>  > While morse code may
>  > be a little silly the general purpose hook  it needs to be done 
>  > cleanly is considerably more useful
> 
> sure. things like lkcd,netconsole etc could all use that
> infrastructure.   The beyond-silly bit was the 'other machine
> to decode morse' argument.

Depends on how good your morse is, I suppose, I wouldn't really want
to decode a oops from morse by ear.

>  > The exact method that a crashed machine, in a rack, in a datacentre,
>  > miles away from me, contacts me to let me know something is wrong
>  > doesn't matter, but if a member of the datacentre staff can get a
>  > detailed message to me, so much the better than just having the box
>  > rebooted.  On the other hand, I don't actually want to have to listen
>  > to ten minutes of morse code over the phone when another box could do
>  > it for me.
> 
> That must be a pretty quiet datacentre. And what happens when more than
> one box starts beeping ?

OK, point taken, that *was* a beyond-silly suggestion :-)

John.